Fees for Valley's two community gardens expected to increase

ENCINO - They never formed a pitchfork-wielding mob, or even raised their gardening trowels in anger.

But users of the Sepulveda Garden Center did express their displeasure in no uncertain terms after the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks threatened to impose a huge fee increase last summer.

For months, the gardeners succeeded in at least delaying the fee hike they said would force some retirees to give up their horticultural hobby.

Now their resistance seems to be wilting.

Recreation and Parks commissioners are expected to vote Wednesday to raise annual fees at the San Fernando Valley's two community gardens from $25 per plot to $120 per plot.

Many green thumbs sound resigned to the increase.

"It's not right, but what can you do?" said Vic Demerdjian, 77, as he tended vegetables and herbs at the Sepulveda Garden Center one morning last week.

The increase would apply to the 807-plot Sepulveda Garden Center in Encino and the 132-plot Orcutt Ranch Community Garden in Canoga Park, both operated by the city.

It's one of several moves officials say are rooted in city cutbacks that have forced the parks department to cover more of its own budget, including $16 million a year in water and electricity costs that used to come out of the city's general fund.

"The city has deep financial problems. We're not exempted from that," said Mike Shull, superintendent of the parks department's planning and development division.

Shull said of the gardeners: "I think we've addressed most of their concerns."

When the Daily News first reported on the issue in November, it appeared the increase would take effect Jan. 1. But gardeners complained - emphasizing the likely impact on cash-strapped seniors, and questioning officials' accounting - and parks commissioners ordered further study.

Staff recommendations posted online Friday said going ahead with the nearly fivefold annual-fee increase will partly offset staff, supply and utility costs calculated at $177 per 10-by-20-foot plot at the Encino gardens and $198 at the Canoga Park facility.

In recent meetings, commissioners talked about helping to create private "scholarships" to help poorer gardeners afford the fees.

Long-term, Shull said, the answer to funding problems might lie in putting all of Los Angeles' 14 community gardens in the hands of private operators.

At the Sepulveda Garden Center on Friday, birds' chirps competed with traffic noise from Highway 101 as a few gardeners worked in the soil.

Demerdjian, a retired Ford production-line supervisor who lives in Encino, said he comes to the garden almost every day to take care of two plots that belong to him and to help with three leased by his 92-year-old uncle.

"I just enjoy it," Demerdjian said, padding around in sandals, jeans and a T-shirt. "I come to my garden early in the morning. I get some fresh air. Nobody bothers me, I don't bother nobody."

He would be able to afford the fee increase, but his uncle would not, Demerdjian said.

Demerdjian, like many gardeners, complains that after years of $20 and $25 fees, the increase is too sharp, and the reasons have been poorly explained.

"It's frustrating, because we've been dealing with this since last November or December, and we still don't have a concrete answer," said Anita Ferry, a Sherman Oaks resident who calls her two garden plots "my Zen place."

Ralph Crane, 81, a Northridge resident who is a former Recreation and Parks personnel director, said he has been a gardener for 30 years at the facility that opened in 1966 on Magnolia Boulevard in Encino.

Crane said he'll pay the $360 a year he would be billed for the maximum-allowed three plots, rationalizing that golf or bowling would cost more.

But he said the fee increase would be "a brutal way of solving the problem," and decried the unpleasant tone of conversation from both parks officials and gardeners at public hearings.

"They've made no provision for people at the poverty level, or for senior citizens," Crane said. "There's people for whom this is going to be a real hardship."

Brian Michaelson, 40, a health care administrator from Lake Balboa who has used the Encino facility for eight years, said losing their plots would impose its own cost for gardeners who grow some of their own food.

If it's voted in by the five-member parks commission, the new fee would go into effect July 1, payable in $60 increments every six months.

The panel also will consider five pages of garden-center rules - including how plots are assigned, a four-foot height limit on fences, and a prohibition on "physical violence" - but has withdrawn a proposal to let gardeners keep their plots for only three years.

Mike Alwyn, 66, a retired security guard who lives in Arleta, said the extra cost would force him to give up his plot after 18 years.

Alwyn said because of the uncertainty, he didn't plant winter crops, and recently took the bolts off the gate to his plot.

"I felt really weird when I was getting my stuff out," said Alwyn, who says gardening has been "therapeutic" for him. "You know how it feels when you're leaving a house, and it's getting all bare? It's a loss.

"A gardener shook my hand, and I said, `Well, I'll be around.' But I don't know."